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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25926016">At the Water Gardens</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariel2me/pseuds/ariel2me'>ariel2me</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>House Martell [24]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Song of Ice and Fire &amp; Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:26:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,237</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25926016</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariel2me/pseuds/ariel2me</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>“We had ten years between us, so I had left the pools by the time [Oberyn] was old enough to play, but I would watch him when I came to visit Mother.” (A Feast for Crows)</em>
    <br/>
  </p>
</blockquote>“Your brother,” his mother said, “is too fearless for his own good.” Her tone was censorious; the look on her face not. Doran weighed and measured each separately, balancing one against the other.   <p>His sister asked, her eyes twinkling, “Oberyn is too fearless for his own good … but is he too fearless for other people’s good, Mother?”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>House Martell [24]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/52588</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>At the Water Gardens</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Below, in the fountains and the pools, the children were still at their play. The youngest were no more than five, the oldest nine and ten. (A Feast for Crows)</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“[Oberyn] was so fierce, even as a boy. Quick as a water snake. I oft saw him topple boys much bigger than himself.” (A Feast for Crows)</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>___________________</strong>
</p><p>“Your brother,” his mother said, “is too fearless for his own good.” Her tone was censorious; the look on her face not. Doran weighed and measured each separately, balancing one against the other,   </p><p>His sister asked, her eyes twinkling, “Oberyn is too fearless for his own good … but is he too fearless for other people’s good, Mother?”</p><p>Doran threw his sister a surprised glance. He did not think she had been listening, intent as she was building a home for her dolls, alongside a gaggle of other children. “We are building a sand home,” Elia had insisted, “<em>not</em> a sand castle.”</p><p>“A castle could be a home too,” Doran had replied, with a kindly smile, as if he were her indulgent uncle rather than her older brother.</p><p>Elia had given him that particular look, the look children above a certain age specialized in, the look that was a mixture of scorn and pity. “I know that. But <em>this </em>home is not a castle. Not every home has to be a castle,” she countered.</p><p>Doran instantly regretted his remark. His sister was seven and his brother was six, he reminded himself. He need not speak to them as if they were still toddlers clambering in the nursery. They were of an age where they would notice, and would resent, being condescended to by someone older.</p><p><em>They have grown so much,</em> he always thought, each time he came to visit. At Salt Shore, time seemed to pass very slowly, but here, among the children, he felt a sense of events great and small swiftly passing him by. It seemed only a short while ago that Elia and Oberyn were babes in their cradles.  </p><p>His own childhood had felt too long and interminable to him at the time. He recalled his growing impatience, waiting for his ninth name day to arrive, when he would leave the pools and the fountains to finally begin his life as a squire at Salt Shore. Nine was the right age, not ten, he had argued, when his mother spoke of waiting until his tenth name day. The future Prince of Dorne did not have time to frolic so long among the other children, he had believed at the time, but now Doran looked back upon his time at the Water Gardens and wished that he had not spent so much of it wishing that he was elsewhere.      </p><p>Princess Loreza was finally replying to her daughter’s question. “Well, that remains to be seen,” she said. “We do not know yet if Oberyn is too fearless for other people’s good.”</p><p>If the eyes were windows to the soul, then his mother, Doran suspected, appreciated Oberyn’s fearless nature more than she condemned it. At least in her heart. <em>What is in our heart matters a lot less than our actions, </em>she had told him once. <em>We may hate, without hurting the people we hate with our actions. We may love, without burning the world to the ground in furtherance of that love. Our actions are what define us.</em></p><p>She was the Princess of Dorne, and the Princess of Dorne could not encourage recklessness in her children. And fearlessness could so easily lead to recklessness, if it went unchecked.  </p><p>“Uncle Lewyn says you were a fiercer and more fearless child than Oberyn, Mother,” Elia said.</p><p>Their mother scoffed. “Your uncle talks too much. Always has, always will. He prattles on as if he’s haggling about the price of fish in the market.”    </p><p>Elia told Doran, “Uncle Lewyn does these wonderful impressions of Mother as a girl. Mother pretends to hate it, but she loves it, really.”</p><p>Princess Loreza laughed. She pinched her daughter’s cheeks, playfully, and said, “You are as bad as your uncle!”</p><p>Elia laughed too, hearing that. “I am not as tall as him, though.”</p><p>Their mother said, “No one is, except the –“</p><p>“– except the highest mountain in Dorne,” Elia finished the sentence for her.    </p><p>His brother and sister often teased their mother, Doran noticed. He tried to remember if he himself ever did the same, when he was a boy. He could remember very few such occasions.</p><p><em>‘Silence is a prince’s friend’</em> came more naturally to him. With his mother, it was a constant struggle. He saw this more clearly now, after being away from home. There was a battle raging inside her, a battle between her more natural disposition and the cautious self she had nurtured to be a worthy and wise Princess of Dorne.</p><p>His mother would laugh, Doran suspected, if he were ever to broach this subject with her. He would not know for certain if her laughter would be one of scorn, or amusement, or discomfiture about a truth she would rather her eldest son and heir not know about herself.    </p><p>In one of the bigger pools, Oberyn was toppling a boy Doran recognized, the younger brother of Dael Dalt, his old playmate in the pools and the fountains. Dael was now the Knight of Lemonwood, after his lord father’s death the year before. This brother was nine, no, ten years of age. His name escaped Doran for the moment.</p><p>Oberyn brought this Dalt boy down easily, riding on the shoulders of Ryon Allyrion. He jumped off Ryon’s shoulders and dunked his head in the water. When he finally raised his wet and glistening face, he waved at his mother and sister. His smile widened, as he spotted Doran.</p><p>Oberyn ran out of the pools and was already shouting, “Did you see that? I got him! I got him good!” before he reached them.   </p><p>Elia replied, “You defeated him fair and square … <em>this</em> time.”</p><p>Oberyn pouted. “Are you saying I didn’t, the other times?”</p><p>They squabbled good-naturedly for a while, Oberyn and his sister. He then turned his attention to his older brother. “Are you a knight now?” he asked Doran. He had been asking that same question for almost a year now, every time Doran came to visit them at the Water Gardens.</p><p>“I am not a knight, no,” replied Doran. “Still a humble squire, I’m afraid.”</p><p>Oberyn crossed his arms and asked, “When will he do it? When will he knight you? Does Lord Gargalen wish to keep you at Salt Shore until your hair turns white?”</p><p>“Our brother is only six-and-ten,” Elia pointed out. “His hair will not turn white for many, many years.”</p><p>“He thinks … we both think … that I will be ready in two years.” Doran addressed the remark to his mother, waiting and appraising her reaction.</p><p>His mother nodded. “Eight-and-ten is a good age to be knighted,” she said, with a smile.</p><p>“I want to be knighted when I am six-and-ten,” Oberyn declared.</p><p>“And who, pray tell, will do the knighting for you?” Princess Loreza asked, raising her eyebrows.</p><p>Oberyn replied, “Doran, of course. Who else?”</p><p>“Will you want him as your squire?” Elia asked Doran. Her eyebrows were also raised, like their mother’s. “He seems such a troublesome boy, to be <em>anyone’s</em> squire.”</p><p>“Of course he wants me,” said Oberyn. “I’m his brother, his only brother.”</p>
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